Liberal Food vs. Conservative Food

Kay at the Internet Food Association website has found a survey by Hunch.com , a site that uses “collective knowledge” to answer questions, on “food-related preferences” by those on either side of the political spectrum. While there is probably more to it all than just political leaning, like urban or rural and educational level, it’s worth taking a look at because it seems to make sense. For instance, liberals prefer arugula and “bistro-style” fries while conservatives like iceberg lettuce and McDonald's fries. It's telling that conservatives classify Velveeta as “cheese” and accept Iceberg lettuce as an adequate means of eating plants. It is surely not scientific but I found it entertaining to read through. Do your food preferences echo your political philosophy? Mine pretty much do.

BTW both liberals and conservative seem to think bacon double cheeseburgers are delish.

Something Worth Reading

Josh Marshall points us to a powerful piece by a Daily News reporter on his meeting with President Obama at Arlington yesterday. Powerful piece . It's not long, but well worth a minute or two of your time.I am not ashamed to say that it left me a little misty.

Change in the Air?

There have been scores of anonymously-sourced reports alleging one thing or another about President Obama's next step with respect to the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. I may be completely wrong but it seems to me as if the President is finally beginning to realize that he is in a 'no win' situation and that the old axiom that says "Afghanistan is where empires go to die" is the hard truth and throwing more American blood and treasure onto the sands there is not the answer. Couple this with the latest 'leaked' cable from Ret. Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who has put in writing his "reservations about deploying additional troops to the country." Eikenberry is not just some diplomatic functionary, he was recently the top American military commander in the country and his concern lends credence to the this AP report suggesting that the president has been presented with a series of options, none of which he finds compelling.

President Barack Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes, a senior administration official said, as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country one day. [...]

He remains close to announcing his revamped war strategy -- troops are just one component -- and probably will do so shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends Nov. 19.

Yet in Wednesday's pivotal war council meeting, Obama wasn't satisfied with any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, one official said.

The president instead pushed for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. In turn, that could change the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official.

The DoD is trying to push the president into escalating the U.S. presence with help from Clinton, Gates and others. President Obama seems to realize that he is being rushed and he is pushing back and that is a good thing. Somewhere I read that the President is seriously concerned with seeing results and getting out or put another way "wants to know where the off-ramps are."

The Pentagon and 'chickenhawks' aren't going to like this and you are going to see another round of complaints about 'dithering'. So be it. I am firmly convinced that Afghanistan is a lost cause and that we should be pulling out as fast as we can. Our efforts in the area should be at stabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear threat, and leaving Afghanistan to its own miserable devices. It's nice to be the 'Lone Ranger' to the world when there is hope of accomplishing something positive but a lost cause is a lost cause and the sooner you stop digging the better.

Like a Bad Penny

Now that CNN has solved their 'Dobbs' problem where do you think he will show up? Politics? Are we going to see a Palin/Dobbs or Pawlenty/Dobbs ticket from the GOP in 2012? My bet is FAUX News. Regardless, you can bet that 'like a bad penny' he'll be back.

Hopeless

You can well imagine that I really don't think much of Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. He has been a leading GOP whack job for years and years, first in the Congress and now as a Senator. It appears, however, that he is not a total ass and that has caused him to find unanimous disfavor with the Republicans in his home state.

The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Charleston County Republican Party's executive committee has voted unanimously to censure South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham for continuing " to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism."

What was this heinous crime? It seems that Mr. Graham has made the mistake of reaching across the aisle to Senator John Kerry and co-authoring an op-ed in the New York Times that laid out a framework for climate legislation and described a "blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution."

The two treasonous Senators called for:

- Aggressive reductions in emissions.

• Nuclear power as a core component of electricity generation.
  
• Financial incentives for carbon capture and sequestration.
  
• Additional domestic oil and gas production.
  
• Ensuring that U.S. companies are not put at a competitive disadvantage.
  
• Establishing a floor and a ceiling for the cost of emission allowances.

What's even worse, and this was probably the straw that sent the mouth breathers back home over the edge, was that they had the unmitigated gall to further align their argument with national security, of all things:

Both of us served in the military. We know that sending nearly $800 million a day to sometimes-hostile oil-producing countries threatens our security. In the same way, many scientists warn that failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will lead to global instability and poverty that could put our nation at risk.

All snark aside. This action by the idiots in the state just North of me illustrates why moving the country forward in the current political situation is going to darn near impossible. That Senator Graham would be censured for such a reasonable act of bipartisanship speaks volumes to the intransigence of what seems to be left of the old Republican party. How are we going to move anything positive forward when what's left of the GOP see all attempts at finding a bi-partisan solution on any issue as something not far from treason?

Flooding Update

It finally quit raining and I ventured out to check on the garden. Mother Nature foiled me again. The nice ditch I dug to divert the runoff from the West got clogged with leaves and the rushing water charged right through the middle of the freshly tilled garden and made its own ditch. I am basically back to square one. Going to have to rethink the water control effort. Estimate is that we got about 5 inches during the last 24 hours and thank goodness it doesn't happen often, well except twice in the last two months.

Veteran's Day

To all my fellow veterans: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae(1872 - 1918)

To the Life Boats!

Tropical Storm Ida is doing her thing. It has been raining at a pretty good clip since late last night and it still raining now at 10pm. I can't guess how much it has rained in the last 18 hours but its a bunch. We'll know tomorrow morning(if it stops raining) how bad the damage is. I tilled(3 times) and loaded up a mountain of leaves in the garden but I don't know if it can absorb this amount of water. Frustration, frustration. There is a ditch to divert the run off from the property to the West but we'll just have to wait and see.

In an attempt to temper the depression over all the rain I decided that something earthy, warm and nourishing had to be on the dinner menu tonight. I relented and bought 4 chicken thighs to braise. A simple mirepoix and Herbes de Provence along with a little white wine and chicken broth did the trick. Slow cooked for three hours and served over a blend of brown basmati and wild rice. It would have been better with a free range chicken but 'industrial' chicken thighs were $.99 a pound and I am on a lean budget. I shudder to think how you can raise a chicken to market weight and sell it at that price humanely but.....I rationalize the purchase of 'industrial' chicken by knowing that I raised the chicken thighs to their highest potential and thus honored the chicken's 'ultimate' sacrifice...I know it's weak... but a little slack.

Has anybody been watching TV and noticed that every car insurance company can save you money over your current plan if you switch? Someone needs to organize an auction or something so us rubes can figure out who has the cheapest insurance for real. They seem to be picking on GEICO...it's probably some suppressed gecko hate or something.

Newt Changing Stripes

Just what we need! It seems that after Newt polled in single digits at the last "Value Voters Summit" behind such luminaries as Huckabee, Pawlenty and Palin he decided he needed a little more Jesus in his act. Seems he is trying to paint himself as a 'religious conservative'. Please Newt just go away. You had your shot and screwed the pooch and in the process proved you were really a lightweight in a fat boy's suit.

Hurricane?

I have spent the last few days repairing all of the damage from the 'epic' rains of September. It finally dried out enough for me to till it all yesterday and now we have a hurricane coming....figures.

HRC Passes the House

So we got a health care bill through the house. This is the first time since Medicare that Congress has passed any major health care reform. Not a great bill but considering all of the special interests and lobbying by Big Pharma, insurance providers and others it is sufficient for the day. The pro-choice people sacrificed themselves for the greater good it seems, but there is still reconciliation to be done and who knows what will happen if and when the dysfunctional Senate passes their own version. I am a proponent of single payer but for the time being I can live with what is done so far.

Oh, and my Congressman Tom Price was a bigger dickhead than usual during the proceedings and I will tell him so the next time I see him or his wife(our new city council woman).

Water Kites

Seriously cool development from the Swedish firm Minesto (part of Saab).

A completely new concept of underwater wave energy using a simple 7 ton kite turbine design has been developed by Minesto; which is a spinoff from the Swedish military and aircraft design firm Saab. The Deep Green underwater turbine captures the power of the ocean just like a kite in wind. The system could generate 18 terawatthours of energy annually, enough to provide nearly 4 million British households with reliably green electricity every year. UK households now use about a third of what average US households use in energy.

There is a video and picture at the link. This looks very promising.

Epic Floods

The USGS has released its analysis of the September flooding in Atlanta and it was defined as 'epic'. They usually class such events as either a 100 year event or a 500 year event but the rains in September exceeded the parameters for either. From 8pm September 20th until 8pm the next day some areas received more than 20 inches of rain. Our normal annual rainfall in the area is usually about 50 or so inches which means that we recieved nearly half of our annual rainfall in 24 hours. I can testify that my garden suffered 'epic' damage and it will take me years to recover fully.

Bad Numbers

The October jobs numbers are out and it is not good. "The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September".

I think it is time to refocus our efforts on job creation.

Paul Krugman, Obama’s Faces His Anzio (and why we need more jobs/stimulus):

If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.

Obama was left with a lot on his plate by the last administration. And the efforts at health care reform, environmental policy change, financial reform, an education bill, immigration reform are all important but the jobs picture has become, I think, the number one priority.

The Republicans proved yesterday that they are not serious about moving the country forward. The Republican leadership embraced extremism at the Michele Bachmann 'tea party' event on the Capitol steps. It was an ugly spectacle. It just reinforced the notion that the GOP is not going to partner with this administration to address the problems that we face. Moreover, it proved that they are seriously pushing the fact that they are, if not completely insane, irresponsible and detached from the reality that is America today. We cannot count on them to be at our side as we try and move forward.

We need to re-prioritize and get something done that will add jobs and, in turn, build the economy.